


the sound of you coming

by eachandeverydimension



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, Hallucinations, M/M, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eachandeverydimension/pseuds/eachandeverydimension
Summary: James is seeing ghosts.





	

James is seeing ghosts.

  
He doesn’t even realize he is until he mentions to one of the lackeys in Q-branch that their new head has a severely questionable fashion sense and receives a puzzled look in return. It gets even stranger when he mentions the old-person cardigans and gets a stricken look, the lackey hurrying off to do work without a backward glance.

  
The next time he’s in Q-branch to hand in some tedious report about a mission, he notices a gorgeous woman manning the head console, prim voice guiding 004 through his mission as her scarlet nails tap against a keyboard lightning fast. She looks like the kind of woman James might sleep with on a mission. Balancing on precariously high designer heels, she rolls up the sleeves of her fashionable blouse and shouts out orders to the rest of Q-branch. In the commotion and mayhem, James ducks out of Q-branch, report in hand forgotten. His footsteps are just a tad too fast, the only sign that he is unsettled.

  
He buys a cup of coffee from the cafeteria, and goes to sit in the park close to MI6. Breezes stir the leaves on the ground into weak vortexes, and the cold saps warmth from him and his coffee until his fingertips feel like ice cubes against his neck. It is only when he sees a figure hurrying across the opposite side of the park, glasses glinting in the evening light and parka bundled around a spindly body, that he comes to the conclusion that he’s having hallucinations. The figure with tousled hair and crumpled cardigans he sees everywhere just out of reach is a product of his mind.

 

-

  
One morning, James wakes up and makes two cups of tea. He makes his own, plain with one sugar, and he doesn’t know why, but he reaches for a second mug. Two sugars, one cream. He knows the order like the back of his hand, but can’t for the life of him remember why, or who it’s for. He puts both mugs on the table in front of him, and sits down on the couch. He stares at the half-empty bookshelves in front of him and very carefully doesn’t think about the empty spaces in his life and what may have been there that he doesn’t remember. Both cups of tea steam quietly in the cool morning air and go untouched.

  
These are the things James doesn’t think about:

  
The stubborn scent of mint that clings onto the kitchen, even after James airs it out. He hates mint. It’s only after he can’t stand it anymore and he angrily slams the windows shut that he spots the mint plant. It is small and tucked into a corner of the windowsill, partially hidden by the curtains, slightly droopy from dehydration, but still clinging on stubbornly. James is very sure that he would never in a million years allow an abomination such as a mint plant enter his house. He doesn’t know anybody who can convince him otherwise.

  
He doesn’t notice for a long time that the frame hanging in the living room isn’t a print, but rather a photograph. At first he dismisses it as one of those pretentious black and white photos that interior designers like to pick, but then one day he stops short in his path and takes a closer look at the photograph. What he sees is this: there’s a little smudge at the top right corner of the photo, one that could possibly be the fingertip of a careless photographer. The shop houses in the photo are just the slightest bit slanted, as if the photographer had been on a swaying boat when he took the picture. And perhaps most damning of all, when James pries the picture out of the photo frame, there’s a small inscription at the back in neat cursive that says: j&q, paris, june.

  
It’s a little embarrassing, but when James had come to the door of his flat, at first he didn’t know how to open it. There’s a keyhole, but it’s fake, and none of the keys in his key fob can go further than an inch into it. He’s close to the end of his tether and just about to pull out his gun and shoot at the hinges when the door finally unlocks. It scans his palm while it’s splayed over the surface of the door looking for secret catches, and a voice says, “Vein pattern recognized. Welcome home, Mr. Bond.” The thing is – James has never liked any of these new-fangled technologies. It pisses him off whenever MI6 installs new security procedures like voice recognition. That’s why he usually blows past all of them and leaves the shrilling of alarms in his wake. He can’t remember what possessed him to install the vein pattern recognition system, but he decides to leave it as it is.

  
After a shower when James is looking for clothes to change into, he finds a ring box hidden in the innermost part of his bedside drawer. It’s his father’s, he recognizes, from the little B engraved on the inside of it, edges the slightest bit worn so it’s no longer as sharp. What he doesn’t understand is what it’s doing in his flat instead of where it should be: Skyfall, where all of his parents’ things were stored after they passed away. He tries to slip it onto his ring finger, but it’s been resized, and it’s just the tiniest bit too small for him, like it’s meant for someone with slimmer fingers.

  
James has emergency supplies. They’re all in one everything-proof suitcase, and that suitcase is stored under his bed. Inside is cash, fake passports, first aid kits, guns, bullets and possibly everything else he could ever need, like a straight razor and a bottle of whisky. When he does his usual monthly check on the suitcase though, he finds that somehow there are duplicates of everything. Another suitcase, exactly the same, has been placed to the left of his, and their contents are almost identical, except for the slim laptop and teabags of Earl Grey in the second suitcase. The gun is slightly different too, a sleek design that he thinks he’s seen in Q-branch before.

  
-

  
One night, James dreams. Not the usual nightmares that plague him, of hiding in a dark place, not knowing the difference between night and day, of blood seeping into the edges of his vision whenever he shuts his eyes, so he keeps them open in the darkness until they burn. Not of short-lived sunlit days in Venice with a woman he loved and would give anything for, and did, of her broken body in the water and the life in her seeping away into the cold in front of his eyes.

  
He dreams of Q.

  
Old-fashioned buildings rising up on his every side and rough pavement that James can feel through his suit where his knees are pressed against it. Mind spinning too quickly and not quickly enough, a torrent of words pouring through his mind. _this isn’t happening i wasn’t fast enough this must be a dream this isn’t happening q can’t be dying._

 

He is cradled in James’ arms, pale and shaky. His eyes are glazed, and blood trickles out from the corner of his mouth when he tries to speak.

  
James can feel the heat in his own face, the warmth pooling in his eyes that cloud his vision. He tries to blink his tears away as his trembling hands press down on the gaping wound in Q’s abdomen. Apply pressure; he has to use his field training and try to save Q, even if a little part of him knows that it’s already too late. Blood spills out of Q’s body, taking his life away with every drop that flows out. It stains the pavement and James’ hands incarnadine. James has seen enough people die to know that no human being can survive past losing a certain amount of blood. Q is quickly approaching that, face turning white like it’s never been before, without blood to give it any color.

  
Q’s hands are shaking as he reaches for James, as tremulous as a leaf in autumn wind on the verge of falling off. His fingertips, bloody from touching his wound, trail blood over James’s face as he cups it. He looks sad, and so resigned. James hates that. Q is a bloody genius and the best Quartermaster there’s ever been. He doesn’t deserve to die like this, from bleeding out because of a lucky shot by some gangster whose body is already cooling. He still has to terrorize Q-branch and the double-ohs and hackers who try to break into MI6.

  
“James, you have to forget me,” he says, voice steely and strong where his hands are not.

  
Forget me and go on, he doesn’t have the strength to continue. Forget me and love someone else and continue your life, James hears in his mind. Forget me and continue with a new quartermaster in your ears during your missions, James continues himself. (Even though Q has irrevocably changed James’ life.)

  
James forgets.

 

-

  
The room is blindingly white. A white desk with white furnishings surrounded by white walls, at the middle of which a psychologist in a white lab coat sits. James has to question the wisdom of outfitting a room in all white. Was this just a thing that they taught in medical school along with the parts of the body? Bad Interior Design 101?

 

Tap tap.

  
The tapping of Dr. Ward’s pen against the table surface is the only sound in the room. A nervous tic, maybe. It’s the sort of thing James has been trained to detect. He doesn’t exhibit any other signs of discomfort though. No foot tapping, or leg shaking. He hasn’t so much as adjusted his seat. Since James entered, he’s been engaging in a staring match with him. The steady gaze that has stared into the eyes of murderers and worse has absolutely no effect on Dr. Ward.

  
The man meets his gaze steadily like he’s studying James or dissecting him, which is probably the case. James hates psychologists. Even before compulsory MI6 psychological evaluations, there had been an array of psychologists after being orphaned. He had stonewalled every single one. They had no right to infringe into his mind and thoughts, and neither did Dr. Ward. There is no trace of fear in his eyes. He must be new then, or foolish. Every single psychologist that James has even seen has attended their sessions with him with a healthy dose of fear. The monsters that dwelled in 007’s mind were not of the usual caliber, even for a MI6 psychologist.

  
And yet. The man is placid and calm, and what surprises James is that he detects a trace of pity in his gaze. It’s an emotion James doesn’t see directed towards him often, or at all, really, unless it’s Eve or M. He doesn’t like it. Dr. Ward knows something he doesn’t.

  
“Tell me about Q,” the psychologist says. (I’ve been here before, James realizes.)

  
“The other double-ohs tell me that she’s exceptional, although I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting her myself.” James may not look like it, but he likes playing games in certain situations.

  
Dr. Ward smiles a smile carefully calculated to encourage and scribbles a word in the notebook open in front of him. “She is very capable. That’s not what I meant though. Tell me about your Q.”

 

-

 

“James, please,” Q swallows thickly. “Listen to me.”

  
His voice is so soft, it’s almost a whisper, so pleading, almost begging. “I’m real. You know I am. I’m right here in front of you.” Q takes a step towards James, towards the distance and table that still separates them.

  
Hands spread out towards James, he implores, “James trust your eyes, your ears. Can’t you see me, hear me? I’m right here.”

  
Tears are welling up in Q’s eyes, threatening to spill down his rapidly crumpling face. Still, James remains impassive. He will not even let his hands clench where they are lying on the surface of the couch.

  
“Have you thought about what it feels like for me? The person I love the most in the world telling me, again and again, that I’m not real, either that or ignoring me completely!” Q takes another step, arms clutched to his chest like he’s been wounded.

  
“I feel like dying, James. I can’t take this anymore.” His voice breaks on _dying_ , and the last sentence is choked out.

  
Tears start pouring in earnest, hot rivulets flowing down Q’s cheeks. His brow crumples and he squeezes his eyes shut. “Please, James,” he whispers.

  
James wavers. He’s not a stranger to tears. He’s been trained to be immune to them, to use them as weapons if necessary. But these tears, they break his heart. It feels so wrong, so wrong to be the cause of these tears, that James can barely restrain himself from going over to comfort Q. He wants to wrap his arms around Q, put his head on Q’s shoulder, and shush him until the sobs finish wracking through his body. He can imagine it, the softness of Q’s hair against his cheek, the smell of Q, mint and salt and warmth, the fabric beneath his hands smooth as he strokes Q’s back.

  
But he doesn’t. He repeats his mantra: _he’s not real not real not real not real_. Picks a spot on the wallpaper and stares at it, repeats _not real_ until it fills up every crevice in his head and he can’t think of anything else. James is the only one in the room. All that he can hear is the city traffic from outside the room. There is no one in the room besides him.

  
There is no one curled up at the centre of the room, choking out tears and clutching his chest like he feels like he can’t breathe, like his heart is about to fail him, like he’s about to die from heartache.

  
There’s no one there. He doesn’t exist. A figment of James’ imagination. Not real not real not real. Not there.

 

-

  
Between one breath and the next, James blinks awake.

  
And-

  
Q is stretched out on the other side of the bed, the lines of his body illuminated by the cold, bright light streaming in through the window at James’ back, like he’s been perfectly outlined with a steady hand and a white marker. His head resting on the back of his right hand, Q smiles at James.

  
It is a smile that looks painfully familiar. It tugs at James’ heart and he wants to feel it against his cheek.

  
They stare at each other for a while, Q unreadable and James wary, because for all that he’s spent almost all his time with Q for the past few months, he doesn’t trust himself, or his mind. James traces the lines of Q’s body with his eyes. He never appears to James in different clothes. A button-up shirt, neat tie, brown cardigan and black pants. A pair of spectacles perched on his nose, even as he lies on the bed now and they’re digging into the side of his face. A parka, sometimes, when he appears outdoors. Never anything warmer though, even when the weather takes a turn for the worse.

  
After what seems like an eternity, Q breaks the silence.

  
“You think you’re going mad,” Q says softly.

  
James doesn’t answer. Instead, he watches Q’s slow blinks. A dark, delicate fan of lashes brush his cheek once, twice. How can this person, with so many dimensions be a product of James’ imagination? Even with his eye for detail, James could never create someone so real, so flawed. There is a scar on Q’s neck and spots of emerald in his hazel eyes and his spectacle frames are chipped at the top and bottom. Smudges of purple mark the thin skin under his eyes and his fingers are calloused where the pen digs into his hand when he writes. Just a few strands of grey hair can be glimpsed in the mess of dark curls. He looks like flesh and blood, imperfect and so here that James wonders again if he is crazy.

  
Finally, James replies, “Yes. I see things that aren’t there. Things like you.” His voice is as soft as Q’s, loathe to break the tranquility of the still morning air.

 

“You and I both know that’s not quite true.”

  
Q smiles and lays a hand out in the space between them. His fingers are loosely curled. Tiny cerulean veins can be seen under the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist. James tells himself again that he isn’t capable of making up a person. He can’t imagine the intersection of his veins or the lines on the inside of his hand.

  
Q’s hand remains still at the centre of white sheets, endlessly patient. It’s an offering. For what, James doesn’t know, but he feels like accepting. He sees a promise and hope and answers.

  
He reaches out.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written back when Skyfall first came out, but somehow never got posted. I figured I'd let it see the light of day.


End file.
